This blog chronicles my travels as a 2016-2017 Thomas J. Watson Fellow exploring cultural attitudes towards health technology around the world. Starting from and returning to New York City, USA, I am traveling to Sweden, Qatar, India, Singapore, Japan, and Botswana over the course of one year.

Tag: pretoria

As the drizzle started to fall on me in Pretoria, I thought about how neither I nor the rain was supposed to be there. I had ten days left on the Watson (six, now), and I had decided to go to Pretoria, South Africa, to meet a company there for my project. It’s winter in South Africa at this time of year, and in the northeast, where the capital of Pretoria is, that means dry season; rain is only supposed to fall there in the summer.

This is at a day care center in Mamelodi, ZA. I’m standing here with Charles, who helped HearX organize screenings for the children.

I wasn’t supposed to be in Pretoria because South Africa is not one of my Watson project countries. Beyond that, I’m technically not supposed to go there because I’ve already spent so time in South Africa, having studied abroad in Cape Town for 5 months my junior year of college. But Pretoria is on the other side of the country, far closer to Gaborone than to Cape Town, and I figured it would be worth breaking the rules for just a few days to see something relevant to my project (especially since I’ve nearly exhausted my project opportunities in Botswana by this point).

The Voortrekker Monument of Pretoria. The monument and enclosed museum commemorate the Voortrekkers, pastoralists who traveled across South Africa in the “Great Trek” of the 19th century.At the Voortrekker monument.

I arrived back in Gaborone last night after another 6-hour bus ride across the Botswana-South African border. Earlier in the Watson, I would have asked for permission ahead of time for this short weekend transgression. As I was visiting a monument in Pretoria enjoying the rain, weather I hadn’t felt in a long time, I realized that I had reached a new level of confidence – the confidence to make that judgement call and know, on my own, that it was still within the spirit of the Watson and still good for my project to break the rules just a little bit – a level of confidence that I could only have now, at the end of the Watson. You can only properly bend the rules once you’ve lived within them and respected their existence.

On the steps of the Voortrekker monument.Looking down from the top floor of the monument.

Of course I have been making my own decisions all year, but always within the bounds of what had already been approved for me – going to Pretoria was a decision that I made on my own basis of what was appropriate, confident that it would be worth it. I used to think “confidence” was simply being comfortable in yourself and your abilities. But that sort of confidence is so easily confused with arrogance. There’s a deeper confidence, I’ve found, that lies within the humble acceptance that you’re making it up as you go, that there is a lot to learn, and that you can still deal with everything in life anyway. The confidence of knowing yourself and having that be enough – not needing anyone or anything else to move forward. The confidence to be able to talk to anyone and not be better than anyone else.

I wasn’t too interested by the museum in the Voortrekker monument, but I loved the architecture of the building and all these vantage points that led to geometric views.

Anyway, before this gets any sappier, I’m glad I went. My project contacts in Gaborone were the ones to suggest the trip to meet with HearX, an e-health start-up that spun out of the University of Pretoria. HearX’s main product is HearScreen, a mobile health solution that facilitates simple hearing screenings. With the HearScreen app and approved headphones, the screener plays 3 different tones in each of the listener’s ears. The listener is supposed to raise a hand when they hear a sound, and the screener notes whether or not the listener responds to all the tones played. At the end of the two-minute screening, the app alerts the screener if the listener has a hearing issue and needs to be referred to an audiologist. The audiologist can then determine why the listener failed the screening (HearX told me that the most common cause is wax blockage, a simple problem to fix) and if they need to go to the next step, such as receiving a hearing aid.

Lelanie (left) and Charles (right) at the Mamelodi day care center. Charles is holding the HearX case, which includes everything needed for a screening – mainly a smartphone with the HearScreen app along with the specific headphones.

I met the HearX people at the Innovation Hub, a set of offices for start-ups in Pretoria. From there, I went with Lelanie, a social worker at HearX, to Mamelodi, a nearby township. That’s where we visited the day care center and met with Charles, a local contact who has helped HearX do school screenings for children in the area. Charles brought in a young boy to show us how the screening worked, and he explained everything to the boy in his local language. I find that these “local ambassadors” are often key for encouraging the adoption and use of m-health and e-health products; Charles is clearly great with kids and made an effort to make the little boy feel comfortable. Lelanie also told me that the kids get more excited about the hearing screening when the screeners tell them that they have to wear the big headphones “like a DJ.”

Charles had me act as the screener for this trial run. The app was really easy to use, although I think I went through the screening a bit too quickly!

I sat behind the kid we were screening so that he wouldn’t be influenced by my actions. Lelanie and Charles told me that when the HearScreen project started, they realized that kids could just watch the screeners using the app, raising their hands when they saw the screeners tapping the phone – anticipating the tone rather than actually responding to it. Otherwise, they haven’t had any issues. HearX is planning to expand into Botswana, which I think would be great. The main challenge there, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is that they’ll have to integrate with the Botswana government to an extent that they don’t have to with the South African government.